The present disclosure relates to designing and testing integrated circuit devices, and more specifically, to methods and systems that determine the affect of voltage overshoot conditions on the dielectrics within such integrated circuit devices.
The maximum operating voltages for microelectronic circuits/products are known to strongly relate to the failure or breakdown of dielectric insulator materials used in microelectronic circuits. The maximum voltages can be traditionally estimated according to dielectric failure models with the assumptions that these operating voltages remain constant within a cycle. In other words, time-dependence of any voltage waveform in terms of voltage-overshoot is neglected conventionally. Currently, there is no simple and straightforward methodology to quantitatively estimate the impact of the voltage-overshoot/undershoot of any waveforms on dielectric failure reliability.